-Live Mint   As United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi prepares to intervene next week in the great national debate about who is poor, she might want to visit north-eastern Mumbai to see how the poorest are not even classified as such and how a giant government scheme to save their children from malnutrition is failing. The nauseating stench from a mountain of garbage greets a visitor to Rafi Nagar at the base...

It will be offered as National Health Package for all common conditions Strongly recommending a re-configuration of the entire health system where the government will have a major role to play, a high level expert group on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has proposed making health care an entitlement to every citizen. The group suggested that health care be offered as a National Health Package (NHP) covering all common conditions and high-impact health...

-IBN   The statement of the Union Minister of State for Health, Mullappally Ramachandran, the other day that the local bodies had failed to utilise National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds comes as no surprise. * The last report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the implementation NRHM in Kerala had pointed out in detail the deficiencies such as absence of a perspective plan, accumulation of huge unspent funds in banks,...

ON August 3, the Chief Information Commissioner, Satyananda Mishra, delivered two important decisions directing the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the Supreme Court to answer certain questions about the functioning of the court to information-seekers in the manner they have sought it. In the first case, Commodore Lokesh K. Batra (Retd) vs CPIO, Supreme Court of India, the appellant had sought details about those cases pending in the Supreme Court...

-PTI   CBI has booked former Chief Medical Officer of Lucknow A K Shukla and former Deputy CMO Y S Sachan, who recently died inside Lucknow district prison under mysterious circumstances, in the multi-crore National Rural Health Mission scam. The agency has filed two cases in the scam as it found leads which indicate that huge financial bungling was allegedly committed by the UP Health Department officials in connivance with the contractors, CBI...